Spiralized rice: since rice dishes tend to not be made with vegetables that release excess moisture, they’re perfect for prepping completely in advance and reheating. They work well in the freezer, especially!

Non-zucchini noodle dishes with ragu-type sauces: If you’re making a bolognese over sweet potato noodles, this can easily be reheated and enjoyed. However, if you’re making a zucchini noodle dish with a bolognese, the water content in the zucchini noodles will thin out the bolognese and take away from its originally delicious flavor.

Dishes with no sauce: If your recipe doesn’t call for a heavy sauce, that’s perfect – it will reheat well. Bonus points for recipes with cheese – the heated cheese will melt nicely into the noodles. This works with zucchini noodles!

Pesto pastas: Pesto sauces work well with all vegetables and reheat well. Actually, the olive oil in the pesto works to our advantage with zucchini noodles. Throw in some kale, spinach or another vegetable that will absorb excess moisture, and you’ve got a pesto pasta, fit for lunch!

Noodle dishes or soups that don’t call for zucchini noodles: If you make a big batch of a spiralized noodle bowl or soup, you can definitely reheat it for lunch – unless it uses zucchini noodles. I don’t recommend this, since zucchini noodles will again thin out the soup and make it less flavorful altogether. However, it’s total personal preference, at the end of the day.

Wraps and sandwiches: any noodle, any ingredient – collard green wraps (or any type of sandwich wraps) work brilliantly! Just wrap tightly in tinfoil or paper and secure with tape when packing for lunch.

Spiralized salads: As long as there aren’t any fruit noodles in there, spiralized salads generally work well if they’re pre-made, as long as they don’t include zucchini or cucumber noodles (which can cause a soggy salad!)

Meal Prepping with Spiralized Zucchini

Please note, spiralized zucchini should not be frozen. When you go to defrost it, it will wilt and become a mushy mess.

It can be tricky to prepare a zucchini noodle dish in advance, due to the vegetable’s high water content (the longer the zucchini sits in a sauce, the more moisture releases and the more watery/mushy the dish will get). This applies for cucumbers as well.

If you’re saving leftovers from a spiralized dish that includes zucchini noodles, here are a few go-to tips:

1. Reserve Some Extra Sauce While Cooking

The best way to make a recipe and save leftovers for the next day is by portioning out some of the sauce, placing it in a container and putting it in the fridge to save. Then, if you’d like to make this for lunch or dinner the next day, just heat up the reserved sauce, cook the zucchini noodles, and pour the sauce over the zucchini noodles.

For example, you could make a big batch of my Gluten-Free Turkey Meatballs with Zucchini Noodles, while reserving a serving of the tomato sauce and meatballs, and then reheat the sauce & meatballs. While the sauce and meatballs heat up, cook the zucchini noodles in a skillet and then pour the sauce and meatballs over the zucchini, once ready.

3. Bring seasonings if you’re having a soup

If you just made a delicious zucchini noodle soup, like the Minestrone from Inspiralize Everything or this Bacon and White Bean Zoodle Soup, here’s a tip: pack extra seasonings. As the zucchini sits in the soup, its moisture will dilute the broth, making it less flavorful. For example, if you’re making my Vegan Zucchini Noodle Ramen, add an extra dash of soy sauce before serving. Other seasonings that can be appropriate are salt, pepper, spices, hot sauce, etc.

This is awesome, Ali! Thanks for responding to my comment on your last post. Thanks for all the tips and all that you do. Going to try to start meal prepping with my spiralizer for next week and use these tips for lunches and dinners. Thanks!

Love your Blog! I have spiralized sweet potato and stored it in an air tight container for 5+ days, without any complaint. I then cook the noodles with a little oil over the stove and find them perfect! You write that they should only keep for a couple days, stored with water & ice. Is there any reason the way I am doing it is unhealthy or wrong? Thanks!

Trackbacks

[…] Besides resolving the watery nature of zucchini pasta, another top question people ask Maffucci is about meal preparation and planning. Can you incorporate spiralizing into your weekly meal planning and do the prep ahead of time to save those time-crunched weeknights? Oh, yes. Set the menu, spiralize, and then use preserve some vegetables in water in the fridge, and others that will brown, like apples, in lemon water. Try some of Maffucci’s meal-planning ways. […]